Monthly Archives: March 2016

The use of open textbooks in the classroom can make a positive impact on students’ success as it enhances their access to course materials while reducing textbook expenses. A more widespread implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER) is contributing to a rapid increase in the number of available materials. This makes adopting quality educational resources a viable option to teach courses in a variety of subject areas.

Open textbooks can be used, reused and shared; and, depending on their license, many of them may also be modified, allowing you to tailor their content to the specific needs of your course. The Open Textbooks page in our library’s OER subject guide provides links to open textbooks available in many subject areas including: Math, Economics, Marketing, History, Biology, Botany, English, Psychology, Sociology, Speech, Anthropology, Anatomy & Physiology, Physics, Chemistry and Culinary Arts. Links to additional resources are regularly added to the guide but you may also let us know if you need help finding resources for a particular course.

Leeward’s Textbook Cost: $0 program is saving students real money. This semester’s estimated savings for students in classes taught by 25 faculty who switched from commercial texts to OER or zero-cost resources is $131,000. Any course can be designated TC:$0 by the instructor. Go to the Textbook Cost: $0 page for more information.

Aloha, here is good news from the library. Last year some instructors expressed their interest in Safari Tech Books Online . Now we have it for you. The Library has recently started the subscription to Safari Tech Books Online. This collection has about 6,000 titles that were published in recent years. The topics include computer programming, mobile application, digital media, networking and so on. Please share this great collection of e-books with your colleagues and students.

“In North Korea, even arithmetic is a propaganda tool. A typical problem would go like this: ‘If you kill one American bastard and your comrade kills two, how many dead American bastards do you have?'”

Women Photographers: from Julia Margaret Cameron to Cindy Sherman by Boris Friedewald is a collection of the stories of 55 groundbreaking female photographers: their lives, their style, and their pictures. The collection portrays the diversity in not only the photographers, but also in their subjects, their view through the lens, and their craft.

“All these are the viewpoints of women for whom the term ‘woman photographer’ is often not precise enough. For highly individual reasons. Zanele Muholi, for example, sees herself as a visual artist. Claude Cahun saw herself as being beyond femininity, masculinity, or androgyny.”

March is Women’s History Month. Celebrate the women in your life! We’ve put together a sample of books and videos celebrating important women and women’s issues throughout history. This display will be available for viewing throughout the month of March. Special thanks to Jayne Bopp, Instructor, Social Sciences for sharing her personal collection of vintage Marwal Industries, Inc. chalkware busts, micro-enterprise project doll from Kenya, and burka from Afghanistan.

This is an informal sneak peek at our new developmental Library website. If you’d like to give us feedback and/or are interested in participating in a focus group, please email carinac@hawaii.edu. We will notify the campus when we send out an official survey.